Rick Wang's Weblog

While I am not a fan of sirloin steak, it is cheap and nice to have once in a while. This piece was marinate in black pepper and olive oil, and cooked with a sprig of rosemary from the garden and generous amounts of additional salt and pepper. It was cooked on maximum heat on both sides, and produced an average steak that was nicely pink on the inside. The rosemary flavor was great.

Needing to use up the remainder of the $2 bottle of red wine, I decided to marinate a couple pieces of chuck roast with the wine and dried thyme. After a couple hours marinating, the meat and marinade were put in a clay put with some tomato chunks and garlic. I skipped the searing step of braising for simplicity. The roast was then cooked for around 6 hours over warm heat to make the meat fork-tender. I added some salt near the end while reducing the liquid. Both the meat and the broth tasted great despite how it looks in the picture!

I needed some food for my hike tomorrow, and had not baked in a while, so I decided to try something different. I mixed approximately 50/50 all purpose and whole wheat flour, salt, yeast, olive oil, and kneaded in some chopped medjool dates. Again, I had some difficulty getting a windowpane, but the dough had risen well anyways. I flattened out the dough into a disc before proofing and made decorative radial indentations. It looked neat after the proof and oven spring. The bread was nicely moist at first, but after a couple of days it became very dry.

I decided to take another try at a slow cooked roast beef by cooking one overnight. The goal was to get the red interior that is seen in deli roast beef. I seasoned the tri tip roast and stuck it into a tagine. I started at 300F, and lowered it to 210F after 15 minutes. I left it on overnight too long, for around 10 hours. The result was well done and tender, but not red or even pink on the inside. Nevertheless it tasted great. It was also fun using the sage grown from the garden.

Motivated by the picture on the calendar from Hannamchain "Market World", the nearby Korean market, I decided to try making samgyeopsal myself. I loosely followed this recipe from Maangchi, omitting some of the recipes, and messing up on the various amounts of ingredients, but mostly turned out well. A serious problem was that the slices of pork belly had some bone pieces in them, so they could not be wrapped into lettuce and eaten in one bite. Instead, I used a fork to eat them on a plate with rice. I also messed up on the pajori, adding way too much soy sauce and causing the green onions to shrink as a result. In the end, I thought that the pajori was not necessary, and the ssamjang alone provided plenty of flavor. The grease splatter form cooking was unbelievable, thankfully the cooking was done outside. Nevertheless, I had some grease splatter onto my glasses as I was turning the meat. Overall, I enjoyed the food and look forward to eating the same dish in a Korean restaurant sometime for comparison.

I followed Peter Reinhart's recipe for french bread, which consists of a 2 day process: first day with a pre-ferment and the actual baking on the second day. I somehow ended up with a dough too stiff, and could not pass the windowpane test. This is probably due to the weather being hot and dry; I should have added more water to get it tacky. However, the bread rose well, and the shaping was easier with the firmer dough. The pan wasn't as long as I would have liked, so I actually had to compress the first baguette after rolling it out. They baked for about 25 minutes at 450F, and the resulting breads tasted great. I'm looking forward to pairing the breads with some cheese and wine for full enjoyment.

I'll admit, I had my doubts about trying this recipe at first, but the highly rated comments and hot weather convinced me to give it a go. This recipe was linked to me over IRC in the #estiah channel some time ago, and I kept putting it off. Today, I made this with a few modifications: (1) cayenne pepper powder instead of serrano chile, (2) omitted vinegar and onions, (3) dill seed instead of fresh dill, (4) lack of feta cheese for garnish. While the disgustingly bright orange looks like either bug blood or puke, or some combination of the two, it tasted really good. Watermelon and tomato dominated the flavor, with the olive oil providing something of a smoothing effect while the cayenne gave it a little bit of kick. It was certainly refreshing!

I followed the Condensed Milk Fudge recipe from Cooking For Engineers, adding crushed walnuts during the extra mix-ins step. It turned out rather well, surprisingly sweet for not having added any extra sugar. This recipe is straightforward and yields great results.

This actually turned out terrible. As I did not have pre-mixed ras-el-hanout on hand, I made up a combination of spices. The allspice/clove/cinnamon was much too dominant and totally ruined the taste of this dish. I also had serious trouble getting the meat tender without a marinating step beforehand. This resulting mix is probably going to get salvaged by being mixed with curry spices. I also overfilled the tagine and had to finish some of the food off in a rice cooker.

Today, I wanted to up some of the various flours my sister has left on the bread ingredients shelf, and decided on kamut. I mixed oatmeal, flour, whole wheat flour, kamut, buttermilk, salt, yeast, water, and oil into the bread machine to make the dough. The dough was still rather sticky and limp after the rise cycle in the bread machine, and I had difficulty shaping into a baguette as a result. I ended up making a ring shape instead. The resulting bread is a bit on the dense side, but still had a respectable rise. It is also firm and tasted better than I had expected.

I had to prepare some food for tomorrow's camping, so I bought Stater Bros' on-sale tri-tip at $2.50/lb. By the time I had started roasting, it was already 10PM at night, so this was pretty much a procrastinated roast. I kept it simple, salt, pepper, and some strips of bacon for extra flavor. It was roasted in a tagine at 325F for half an hour, then lowered to 250F for 2 hours, then 200F for 2.5 hours. The camera flash makes it look rather pink, and I wish it had actually came out that way. In actuality, it was well done and more of a brown color. I had to wake up at at around 3AM to take the roast out of the oven. The following day, I sliced it up, and put most of it into french rolls for beef and brie sandwiches. I'm looking forward to eating them tonight!

I felt like using the tagine today, but was too lazy to do anything complicated. As a result, I ended up making a dish with minimal ingredients: chicken, adobada spice, frozen pineapples, frozen mangoes. I had no idea if this would work or not. I put it all together and stuck it in the oven at 375F for 1.5 hrs. A lot of liquid had flowed out during the cooking, and as a result, the chicken was not as flavorful as I had hoped. However, it was still tasty and I ate it all in one sitting, with some of the previously baked bread.

One of the nicer sourdough variants at the local Old Town Bakery is a cheese bread, with cheese integrated into the bread instead of merely on top. I tried making my own variant of the sourdough cheese bread, but as a yeast bread. This was done fairly quickly, and baked immediately after the basil bread. I like how the scoring pattern came out, although I wonder if I should have adjusted the angle as I moved along the length, cut a sharper diagonal, and deeper. As with the basil bread, the taste is rather plain, with only hints of cheese. It might have worked better if I had used chunks of cheese instead of shredded cheese. I also baked this at a lower temperature of 350F and got great oven spring as well as the same fluffy texture.

I had some leftover pizza dough from yesterday, and did not feel like another pizza, so I shaped the dough to bake as bread. At the lower baking temperature of 350F instead of the normal high pizza temperature of 450-500F, the dough came out soft and fluffy instead of chewy. I was surprised by the amount of oven spring after proof, and would have scored the bread differently in hindsight. Despite the large amounts of olive oil and basil in the dough, the taste does not come out at all. It tastes rather plain but still good.

I followed Peter Reinhart's recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice, page 108. The anadama is supposed to be traditional New England bread based off based off cornmeal and molasses. The recipe was straightforward to follow, however I had some trouble kneading the dough to pass the windowpane test. I gave up after 15 minutes of kneading and it seemed okay. The shaping was somewhat sloppy as well. The resulting bread seems like it would make a good sandwich bread, but does not have enough flavor to be enjoyed plain.